


idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword

by mountainsbeyondmountains



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dark!Jon, F/M, Speculation, more dreams for winds of winter that will never come true, my poor babes they're so traumatized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 18:43:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12688023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountainsbeyondmountains/pseuds/mountainsbeyondmountains
Summary: A dead man holds Winterfell.Title from Hozier's "From Eden", which is THE jonsa song imo.





	idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword

***

What color cloak does a bastard wear to her wedding? Petyr suggests white, to call to mind purity. Something untarnished. But the shade reminds Sansa of the Kingsguard's mantle and the cruel kiss of steel-gloved hand. She swallows back the taste of blood, smiles as if she hasn't a thought in her head, and begins to sew a starless black cloak. In King's Landing, they always dressed her in watered-down crimson and gold, never allowing her to show her grief for her family, so she'll wear her mourning now. Besides, black is the color belonging to the only family remaining to her now- Jon, fellow bastard, half-brother, even if she only ever grudgingly called him so. 

He is Lord Commander of the Wall now. Sansa had hardly been able to mask her startled joy at the news, but her shock was more that he was still alive than that he had risen through the ranks so rapidly. He'd always been courageous and astute, destined for some kind of honor. Quiet, like Father. Perhaps, when she is Lady of Winterfell-  _soon, soon,_ Petyr promises- he will ride south to see her. 

Sansa contemplates this as she leans close over the ebony fabric spread in her lap. In the dim candlelight, even she can hardly make out the secret she has hidden its folds: an embroidered jet sigil of a snarling direwolf. 

***

Sansa often heard her lady mother fondly recall how Ned Stark did not permit the bedding ceremony to take place the night their two houses were joined. He found it a brutish custom. And of course Tyrion had held off Joffrey valiantly as he could, but Harry Hardying has no similar reservations. He revels in the women's attentions, while Sansa cringes and tries to hold her gown close. It ends up torn on the dusty stone floor anyway, along with the falcon cloak Harry had draped over her shoulders. Hadn't he just sworn to protect her? Instead he groped and grasped, panted over her like a dog before slumping beside her to sleep the dreamless slumber of fools and innocents. He looked dead, lying there.  _He might as well be_ , Sansa thinks, staring at his handsome form in the moonlight. 

Tomorrow the blood-spattered linen will fly over the mountains of the Vale like a victory banner.

***

"It's too cold to dig graves," Sansa remarks with no great emotion.

Petyr shakes his head. "Nonsense. The citadel hasn't yet sent out the white ravens. It's still autumn."  _Then why are you shivering?_ Sansa wants to ask. She can feel winter in her wake, and knows he won't survive it. 

"The ground won't yield," she repeats. She wonders if it's possible to grieve over someone she never loved.

Will they just leave the corpses to rot? Or will the cold preserve them? Will Harry and Robin's faces become legends of the landscape? Perhaps they will sink them deep into the earth, among the other secrets held there, once they pass through the Neck. "We could always burn them." Let their remains float up into the bewilderingly blue sky. 

"We are not Targaryens," Petyr dismisses.

***

Sansa doesn't like to light candles in her tent. Petyr insists on pitching his beside her, and she fears he watches even her silhouette through the canvas. He has grown far too bold since Harry and Robin's deaths. Sansa has taken to carrying a knife with her wherever she goes. She keeps it sharp and tucks it beside her heart inside her bodice. 

"Why aren't we proceeding?" she demands. Winterfell is a scant day's march from here- she knows these lands, can almost just make out its familiar shape on the horizon- yet they linger, growing old.

"There's been a complication," Petyr admits. "Something I did not see coming. Something I did not think possible."

"What could that be?" What the point of Littlefinger if not his knowledge? Sansa can find lechers anywhere. 

"None of your concern, sweetling. Don't worry."

 _I am nobody's sweetling. Especially not yours._ "Tell me." Her words may be useless. Trying to hold a man like him to the truth is like trying to hold water in her hands. 

"It turns out Winterfell is already taken."

"By who?"

"Stannis Baratheon, aided by a host of northern houses and mountain clans. He keeps the Greyjoy siblings captured, claims to have freed your sister, and is accompanied by one Aegon Targaryen."

Sansa considers this development. "The northern houses will flock to my cause when they hear a trueborn Stark heir as come to reclaim her ancestral home. Even Stannis cannot deny my birthright. The forces of the Vale far outnumber any other army in Westeros. The Greyjoys are traitors to every vow they ever swore. Arya... Arya won't be held under any many's thumb. She's my sister. She'll be happy to see me. And Aegon Targaryen is dead." She believes the words more once they are spoken.

"It doesn't matter if Aegon is truly dead or alive. Stannis has found a pretender and people are rallying."

"How does a Targaryen help his cause?"

"I have heard rumors he aims to betroth the dragon to his daughter."

"Shireen is a little girl, a sickly one at that. And Aegon is dead. They bashed his brains against the walls of the Red Keep. Everyone knows it." The north is no place for dragons. 

"A dead man holds Winterfell, then. So be it. Stannis has already solved half our problems by ousting the Boltons. Our plans change slightly."

 _You never tell me our plans._ "So what next?" Sansa asks. Winterfell is so close, she won't be deterred now. 

"You could seduce the boy, pretender or no. If people believe he is true, you could use him to secure the Iron Throne. Why stop at Winterfell when we could have the Seven Kingdoms? You grow more lovely by the day, sweetling. It will be no trouble." He strokes her cheek and Sansa knows he sees her mother standing here. She hides her revulsion. Why stop at Winterfell? Because it's all she wants. She's seen the Iron Throne, what it does to people. She never wants to go south again. She wants the north to love her. She wants to bathe in the hot springs and sit in the godswood and visit the crypts. Maybe this boy who calls himself a dragon could help her gain Winterfell and be rid of Petyr. So she acquiesces. 

"What about after I've... made him mine and we've taken all we can from him?"

Petyr stops his caressing of her face and seizes her chin tightly. Sansa strains against his grip. He lowers her head towards his, so she can't see his eyes as he says, "You kill him, sweetling. Same as Harry."

These are lean times. Sansa has to satisfy herself with small rebellions. "And what, will we burn the body this time?"

***

He awakens  _furious_ , with the salt of blood in his mouth and smoke charring his lungs. One moment he was a wolf and the next he was a man. They put an unbreakable sword in his hand, weigh him down in armor black and red, lie to his face. They march him south to somewhere they call home. He has no home. They call him friend, god, lord, false names. He's a wolf in a man's skin. They point him in one direction, command him to kill, and he's happy to obey. They tell him their enemies hurt his kin, but he has no kin. They call a girl Arya, but she's just no one. They call him Aegon, but he has no name. 

Without a sword in his hand, when there's no one to kill and he's forced to be still, he grows restless. He  _remembers_. He remembers steel in his heart and a kiss of fire and a blue eyed threat approaching, closer, closer with each passing day. 

***

"She's a pretender," Stannis thunders. "Alayne Arryn? Littlefinger's bastard? What claim has she to anything?"

"They say she's beautiful."

Stannis glares disdainfully. "What use is beauty when winter is coming?"

The red priestess presses close against the wall of the strategy room at those words. Food supplies in Winterfell are running low, and every extraneous body's necessity is questioned. She shouldn't be here. She claims to have resurrected him. Should he be grateful? No, he should show her the peace of death. None of these men should be hrtr. Let Stannis have the Iron Throne, but get him out of the seat Ned Stark once claimed.

"This girl commands the Vale."

"LIttlefinger commands the Vale."

"She needs to be eliminated."

Their pale thin faces turn toward him to make another offering. Good- if they don't keep giving him enemies to kill, he'll soon turn his sword on friends.

***

There's someone inside his chamber. He could sense it, even though the dark and the iron-enforced oak door. He braces his hand on Longclaw's pommel and shoulders his way inside. He'd rather attack than defend himself. Before he can even recognize the intruder, Ghost bounds forward in what he assumes is an attack. 

He's wrong.  _You know nothing._

Ghost is excited, ecstatic even, licking at the stranger's face. Pale white arms wrap around the wolf. Fingers curl into the white fur.  _She's not afraid, whoever she is_ , he realizes before snarling, "Ghost, to me."

Ghost reluctantly pads to his side, whimpering all the while.

Only one candle is lit, and he can just make out red hair, long limbs. Her face is shadowed and she won't meet his eyes."My lord," she murmurs with a northern accent. "I was sent to warm your bed."

Jon removes his hand from Longclaw. Until now, he's only yearned for the sound of dying gasps but now something previously frozen in him is welling up and threatening to spill over. He takes her by the hair- gently, gently- and presses her to him. He doesn't need to see to know she's beautiful, he can  _feel._ This is the closest anyone has gotten since his return. He never thought he'd get so close to a woman this beautiful in his younger years, last time he was in this castle. He guides her closer to the bed, closer to the flickering single candle, draws back to take her in and suddenly recognizes- "Lady Stark?"

"Jon?"

She shifts back away from his on the bed, then spreads her arms for another kind of embrace. Her expression is the one she used to wear at the story's end, when the hero had saved the maiden. Jon reaches out his hand. Grasps her by the throat.

***

Her father's ghost has Sansa by the neck and is intent on throttling the life from her. So Sansa ignores the agony and her scalding tears so she can retrieve the knife from her bodice and brandish it towards Jon.  _Jon, not Aegon, what had they done?_ She feels like an imposter, not intimidating at all.  _Arya could do it. It should be her. He would welcome her._

Jon's grip does not lessen at her feeble threat. "No," he growls. "One of the Red Witch's tricks."

Sansa thrusts the blade so that its point just touches the hollow of his throat. This is far from the reunion she'd longed for. "I'll do it," she chokes, barely audible. She's become an excellent liar; he releases her. She rubs her throat before gasping, "Jon, I'm Sansa. Not my mother. Not a trick. Don't you recognize me? Don't you remember?"

"Prove it."

"Remember... in the crypts. You coated yourself with flour. You scared me and Bran, but Arya laughed."

He doesn't thaw, but at least he's no longer trying to kill her. "It's winter. You should be dressed more warmly."

Sansa shivers in the ridiculous garb Petyr had put her in. She'd hated being smuggled into her home like one of Theon's whores, back when they were barely still children. Winterfell was no place for Lyseni silks. Sansa wraps herself in the blanket from the bed. The wolfskin was almost a shield. "Jon, what happened to you? They told me Aegon Targaryen would be here."

"And here I am."

"Do you take me for a fool?" She fears he'll answer yes, and amends, "Tell the truth."

"I am. Father lied to us."  _At least_ , Sansa muses,  _Jon has not lost his tendency for melodrama._ "The men under my command at Castle Black mutinied and killed me. Stannis' red priestess said some of her spells when they laid my body on the pyre. I didn't burn. I woke instead. I went to the godswood. Bran told me through the heart tree that my mother was Lyanna Stark, my father Rhaegar Targaryen. I mustered the wildlings and helped Stannis seize Winterfell. The traitors are all dead. I killed them." He said this quite impassively, as if telling a pointless story to a child just to make them fall asleep.

All Sansa could think to say was, "But you look Stark." She had  _kissed_ him, kissed him like she'd never kissed Joffrey or Petyr or Harry. How had she not seen it before? There was no violet or silver in him.

Jon only shrugs.

"You spoke to Bran? He's alive? And where is Arya? She should be here."

"Arya was never here. It was your friend, the one with brown hair. She was disguised. And I heard Bran's voice through the heart tree. He's beyond the wall somewhere."

Bran, Arya, Jeyne,  _alive._ Sansa longs to run from the room and seek them out. But one aspect of Jon's tale is even more disturbing than the rest. "You said they killed you."

He nods, begins to undo his jerkin. Sansa's flush from earlier returns, and she protests, "There's no need," but the words die on her lips when she sees the gashes in his chest. No man should breathe or speak with such wounds sustained. He should be ash, ice, buried. It's unnatural. For the first time, Sansa begins to believe him. He never had been a liar, had he?

***

Sansa snakes an arm out from beneath the blanket, and touches Jon's wounds. He flinches. This must be proof he is what they say he is. Only a Targaryen would want his sister's hands to remain on him. Sister. Cousin. Jon feels an unfamiliar emotion- not hate or vengeance, but regret. "I'm sorry for hurting you earlier," he mumbles.

"I've had worse."

"How did you end up here? I thought you must have died shortly after the prince was killed. Some say you killed him."

Sansa shakes her head.  _Kissed by fire._ "Baelish smuggled me away, hid me in the Eyrie. He killed my aunt Lysa- she tried to kill me first, though. He had me pretend to be his bastard, married me to the heir of the Eyrie. We killed him. Poor Harry. Then we rode north."

"You don't sound grateful," Jon observes. 

"I'm not. Littlefinger is odious. He only wants me indebted to him. He sent me here to seduce Aegon Targaryen, use him to claim the Iron Throne, then dispose of him."

For a shameful moment, Jon sees himself sitting not on the accursed throne, but in Ned Stark's chair in the Great Hall of Winterfell, dressed in grey and white, Sansa beside him. The vision is eerily familiar, close to the sight he used to gaze at with such jealousy when he was younger. He must distract himself. "I could kill Littlefinger for you."

"My true Dragonknight," Sansa smiles. "Can I hold you to that?"

Jon nods. "What will you tell Littlefinger? About what happened?"

"I supposed that depends on what happens," she replies.

 


End file.
